Community activist Graciela Sanchez told us this week that the rumor floating around town is that Councilman Diego Bernal plans to break up the vote on his anti-discrimination proposal scheduled to be vetted next month by the full council.

Sanchez was irked by it. She and several members of the Community Alliance for a United San Antonio — CAUSA — met with the Express-News Editorial Board Wednesday to discuss Bernal’s proposed ordinance. The group supports Bernal’s proposal to fix the city’s anti-discrimination policies, which right now are a hodgepodge of disparate references scattered across the city’s code of ordinances.

Bernal’s plan has two thrusts: to do so-called “housekeeping” by consolidating the anti-discrimination policies into a single ordinance that can be found — and followed — easily; and to include a few protections that currently aren’t listed.

Along with protections for race, religion and ethnicity and other categories, the ordinance would include protections for sexual orientation, gender identity and veteran status if Bernal’s proposal is successful.

Some religious groups have organized opposition against the proposed ordinance (which would help San Antonio catch up with its metropolitan Texas brethren), while other religious groups are rallying behind it.

And the scuttlebutt at City Hall is that the North Side council members (D9′s Elisa Chan and D10′s Carlton Soules) are poised to vote against protections for the LGBT community.

Which brings us back to Diego Bernal.

Councilman Diego Bernal is spearheading the effort to update San Antonio’s anti-discrimination ordinance.

We gave the councilman a call today to run the grist past him. The rumor of splitting up the vote is true, he confirmed. A split vote isn’t what CAUSA wants; the group is advocating for all three protections to stay together, in a single up-or-down vote.

The idea of keeping all three protections together goes like this: If council members are inclined to vote against protections for gender identity and sexual orientation because they believe that vote represents their constituents, then they’d be forced to vote against protecting veterans in Military City, U.S.A. And if their patriotism is strong enough to fight for veterans at any cost, they’d have to offer their support, too, to the LGBT community.

Perhaps there would be such distaste in voting against veterans that there would be deeper council support for the anti-discrimination ordinance.

Bernal is not inclined to force his colleagues to make that choice.

“No one wants to vote against veterans — I get that,” he said.

So why not keep the three protections together and force your colleagues to vote against veterans if they’re inclined to vote against LGBT protections?

“I didn’t include veterans to be some sort of shoehorn or Trojan horse for another group,” Bernal said.

He doesn’t want to be accused of including veterans merely for leverage for the other protections.

There’s no question that the council will support adding protection for veterans. And Bernal is confident that in a separate vote, protection for sexual orientation and gender identity will be victorious. While the vote for the LGBT protections likely won’t be unanimous — as the veterans’ vote easily could be — there’s still enough support for the LGBT protections to pass.

Perhaps Bernal sees an opportunity for his city to score one for civil rights during a moment in time when LGBT issues are in the forefront of public discourse across the nation.